Clojure editor/IDE recommendations on Mac OS X
MacosIdeEditorClojureMacos Problem Overview
I am starting to learn the Clojure programming language. Are there any recommendations for Clojure editors/IDEs on Mac OS X?
Update 2009-09-23: The Clojure space has changed tremendously since I originally posted this question. Many of the links below, especially those that refer to clojure-mode with Emacs, are out-of-date. The best Clojure IDE I found was the Enclojure Netbeans plugin which was recently released (2009-08-25).
Update 2010-04-30: Another very good article on this subject is Clojure IDEs - The Grand Tour by Lau B. Jensen. Also, for my own clojure development, I have actually moved to Emacs / swank-clojure.
Macos Solutions
Solution 1 - Macos
For setting up Aquamacs, Slime and Clojure, there's a screencast on lispcast.com:
http://www.lispcast.com/drupal/node/79 (broken link)
Edit: That's a nice alternate screencast you found Jman. I've added it to my answer so it's a bit more comprehensive.
Solution 2 - Macos
Emacs+SLIME is going to be the most productive if you are going to be spending your time editing Lisp code and not doing much Java.
Paredit is also a must-have since it makes it almost difficult to insert invalid s-expressions. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it is emphatically worth it.
Solution 3 - Macos
Solution 4 - Macos
One of the "big 3" Java development IDEs is IntelliJ IDEA. It used to get less market share because it's not free as in beer. JetBrains is now providing a Community Edition of http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/">IntelliJ IDEA . I'm not a regular Mac user myself, but the http://osx.iusethis.com/app/intellijidea">OS X 'I use this' folks say it runs there too.
IDEA has a plugin called La Clojure, available directly from the plugin manager under "Settings," that makes Clojure development pleasant and productive.
Previously, I tried
- http://sourceforge.net/projects/waterfront/files/">WaterFront</a>;, for which "IDE" is IMO a bit of a reach;
- http://code.google.com/p/counterclockwise/">Counterclockwise</a>;, a pretty good Eclipse plugin; and
- http://www.enclojure.org/">Enclojure</a>;, the NetBeans plugin.
but anticipate staying with IDEA and La Clojure
Solution 5 - Macos
Rich Hickey uses Aquamacs in all of his demos. He has commented about this, saying that he switched to it after someone created a Clojure mode for Emacs. I have also created a Clojure mode for jEdit.
At the moment, tool support for Clojure is pretty limited. I think you're either stuck with some Emacs variant or jEdit.
Solution 6 - Macos
If you go the emacs route, I highly recommend using clojure-paredit. Paredit takes some getting used to, but it really reinforces the "code is data" notion.
Solution 7 - Macos
This is an old question, but the landscape of the Clojure tooling has evolved quite a bit.
Nowadays the options are :
- Light table, very easy to get started.
- IntelliJ + Cursive or La Clojure. Someone once recommended me Cursive.
- vim + fireplace. I know some very productive people use it.
- Emacs + CIDER and Paredit, my personal choice. Apparently Rich Hickey uses Aquamacs.
I personally learnt to use Emacs to use it with Clojure, although some may argue that learning two things at the same time is not a good idea.
There is a survey here regarding the popularity of IDE/Editors :
Solution 8 - Macos
Solution 9 - Macos
Emacs Carbon with SLIME and clojure-mode works like a charm. I tried Aquamacs before and it feels too different from the command line emacs for me. I really don't like Terminal.app and after months fighting against it I decided to migrate to Carbon.
Solution 10 - Macos
TextMate is a great editor and has a Lisp bundle, which will suffice for Clojure (there's also an in-progress bundle available [here][1]). I've always used TextMate + the Lisp bundle for writing Clojure code.
[1]: http://www.loufranco.com/blog/assets/clojure.zip "Clojure bundle for TextMate"
Solution 11 - Macos
I'm using Vim for Clojure and am enjoying it. I installed the Vim Clojure plugin mentioned in the wiki and also followed the instructions there for making the REPL more user friendly using rlwrap.
Solution 12 - Macos
Light Table is pretty great; unfortunately I can't run it on my Mac because I'm stuck on OS X 10.6 and it requires 10.7+.
I've been using Light Table on another Mac and on several Windows computers – it's pretty nice.
[I used to help out with the open source project.]
Solution 13 - Macos
Bill Clementson has updated his setup.
Solution 14 - Macos
You may also try IntellliJ IDEA with La Clojure plugin.
Solution 15 - Macos
I use Clojure on MacOSX for about 3 months. I am very happy with Emacs and use it for more an more tasks. The start was quite hard but now i would say it was worth the efforts to learn emacs. For IntelliJ 10 the La Clojure Plugin has been updated so that it should work now with Clojure 1.2.0 again.